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| IPA – number | 177 |
| IPA – text | ǀ |
| IPA – image |  |
| Entity | ǀ |
| X-SAMPA | |\ |
| Kirshenbaum | t! |
| Sound sample | |
The dental clicks are a family of click consonants found, as constituents of words, only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the forward articulation of these sounds is ǀ. This must be combined with a symbol for the rear articulation to represent an actual speech sound. Attested dental clicks include:
The last is what is heard in the sound sample at right, as non-native speakers tend to glottalize clicks to avoid nasalizing them.
Prior to 1989, [ʇ] was the IPA representation of the voiceless velar dental click.
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Features of dental clicks:
English does not have the dental click (or any click consonant, for that matter) as a phoneme, but it does occur as an interjection, usually written tsk or tut (and often reduplicated tsk-tsk or tut-tut), used to express commiseration, disapproval, or irritation. Note, however, that while these words often represent a dental click and may be pronounced as such, they are also frequently pronounced as /tɪsk/ or /tʌt/, and in such cases cannot be said to be dental clicks.
Dental clicks are common in Khoisan languages and the neighboring Nguni languages, such as Zulu and Xhosa. In the Nguni languages, the tenuis click is denoted by the letter c, the murmured click by gc, the aspirated click by ch, and the nasal click by nc. The prenasalized clicks are written ngc and nkc.
The Cushitic language Dahalo has four clicks, all of them nasalized: [ŋ̊ǀ, ŋǀ, ŋ̊ǀʷ, ŋǀʷ].
Hungarian does not have any click consonant as a phoneme, but the dental click does occur as an interjection, usually written cöccögés, used to express commiseration, disapproval, or irritation. German uses the dental click in the exact same way as English, though it is usually rendered ts or tss in writing.
Among Persian-speakers, including speakers of Dari and Tajiki, the dental click is used to denote a negative response to a "yes or no"-type question. The dental click is usually accompanied by an upward motion of the head. This use of the dental click can be found in some neighboring regions of the Middle East and Central Asia as well.
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